Jerry Berman (1903, Pikeliai, Kėdainiai, now Lithuania – 1979, Cape Town, South Africa) was a South African engineer. He was a witness of the

Holodomor The Holodomor ( uk, Голодомо́р, Holodomor, ; derived from uk, морити голодом, lit=to kill by starvation, translit=moryty holodom, label=none), also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famin ...

, who left vivid testimonies in his letters to relatives and friends, which are currently kept in the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Kyiv.

Biography

Jerry Berman was born in 1903 in the territory of modern Lithuania in a Jewish family. In 1921 he emigrated to South Africa. In 1923, he enrolled in the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university sta ...

. From 1932 to 1935, he worked in the Soviet Union, in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where he witnessed the Holodomor. He described his impressions in letters to his brother Israel, which the latter copied at Jerry's request and sent to several other recipients, including Jerry's friend

Meyer Fortes Meyer Fortes FBA FRAI (25 April 1906 – 27 January 1983) was a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana. Originally trained in psychology, Fortes employed the notion of the "person" ...

in the UK. At his request, he was transferred to Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, where the food situation was better. In 1935 he returned to South Africa. He supervised the construction of bridges and roads, achieved a high position in the ministry. He got married in the 1940s, and a son was born in 1947. He retired in the late 1960s, died in 1979 in Cape Town. In 2016, Alison Marshall, the granddaughter of

, found Berman's letters. On the advice of the Ukrainian-British artist and researcher Sara Nesteruk, in 2021 she donated them to the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berman, Jerry 1903 births 1979 deaths Holodomor South African engineers University of Cape Town alumni South African people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent